A unique blog dedicated to covering the worlds of book publishing and the news media, revealing creative ideas, practical strategies, interesting stories, and provocative opinions. Along the way, discover savvy but entertaining insights on book marketing, public relations, branding, and advertising from a veteran of two decades in the industry of book publishing publicity and marketing.

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Monday, April 2, 2018

Have You Read The Forbes Book Of Quotations?

I
recently reacquainted myself with the Forbes
Book of Quotations, edited by Ted Goodman. I would encourage you to do so
too.

The
book, broken down into about 250 categories, presents 10,000 thoughts. I noticed many of the quotes are from
writers. They are quoted on a wide
variety of subjects, from ability to zeal. A few of the entries dealt with topics near
and dear to the author or book publicist, including “reading,” “books,”
“words,” “writing,” “publicity,” “news” and “grammar.” But many topics tried to capture key aspects of life
-- religion, sex, politics, business, and government.

Cicero,
Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dr. Seuss, Thomas Paine, Norman Mailer, Herman
Melville, and Voltaire are amongst the thousands of quoted individuals. You can read this book many ways – by topic
or by randomness. Turn to any page and
you are confronted by wisdom of the ages, on matters that touch upon what makes
us human and gives us hope – and passion – as well as what angers and
frustrates us. As Francois de la Rochefoucald said: “Wisdom is to the mind
what health is to the body.”

The
mind gets plenty of nourishment when reading this.

Here
are some sample quotes that relate to topics that link to the writer and his world
of concern:

Reading

“Lists
of books we reread and books we can’t finish tell more about us than about the
relative worth of the books themselves.”

--Russell Banks

“To
read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”

--Edmund Burke

“”Have
you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the
whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? To the company of saint and sage, of the
wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see the keenest eyes,
hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space
for us.”

--James Russell Lowell

“Reading
is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

--Richard Steele

“The
man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read
them.”

--Mark Twain

Publicity

“The
two things that people want more than sex or money are recognition and praise.”

--Mary Kay Ash

“All
publicity is good, except an obituary notice.”

--Brendan Behan

“To
have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.”

--T.E. Lawrence

News

“News
is the first rough draft of history.”

--Philip I. Graham

Books

“The
failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most
fatal tendency – the belief that the here and now is all there is.”

--Allan Bloom

“All
that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic
preservation in the pages of books.”

--Thomas Carlyle

“Autobiography
is probably the most respectable form of lying.”

--Humphrey Carpenter

“To
add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.”

--Cicero

“It
is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the
most suspicious evidence against him.”

--Victor Hugo

“I
hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they do not
understand.”

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Only
when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to
write an autobiography.”

About Me

Brian Feinblum, the creator and author of BookMarketingBuzzBlog, is the chief marketing officer for the nation's largest book promotions firm, Media Connect (www.Media-Connect.com), formerly Planned Television Arts, and has been involved in book publicity and marketing since 1989. He has served several book publishing companies as a publicist, book editor, and acquisitions editor. Brian, who earned a BA in English from Brooklyn College, became a published author in 1995 when he penned The Florida Homeowner, Condo and Co-Op Handbook. He resides in Westchester, New York with his wife, two young children, and an English Bulldog.